~ …at home in the muddy water.

Monthly Archives: November 2011

i am thankful to live in a part of the world where, despite its many issues, people live in religious harmony, in a town that provides a beautiful example of interfaith co-existence. hindus and muslims live in peace here, far from the pakistani border. the men of islam can be identified by their caps and white koltas, but the women are just as colourful as their hindu neighbours; bright swaths of colour and sparkle and nothing to mark them as muslim or hide them from the world: no burkas, no abayas. the imams vie for the quiet night air time as they call their followers to prayer from the two mosques in town. the muslims light sparklers with the hindus on diwali; the hindus wait for prayer to pass before offering tea to the muslims. the children run barefoot together and laugh. meanwhile my coworker kalam, a lawyer with 12 years working for women’s rights, was denied a visa to america to attend an anti-trafficking conference in san francisco, because his first name is mohammed.

i am thankful that i was not born in a bamboo shack on a dirt lane, the latest daughter threaded on a string of prostitutes running back for generations.

i am thankful to have a hand pump outside my home which, thus far, brings relatively potable water to the surface. so few people, in this country or in others, can say that. i see children swimming in pools of filth where water buffalo lounge and men shit and women wash clothes, and then they bring the water home to their mothers for tea. holy rivers filled with trash and the ash of burning bodies.

i am thankful that i am literate.

i am thankful that i am living somewhere where i do not have to be ashamed to be american. it is too rural here for anyone to hear anything other than the golden platitudes of America the Beautiful, and for the vast majority, my country is still the ultimate dream and goal; a land of plenty and of happiness and freedom. i do not correct them; in many ways they are right. but it is a relief not to apologize for my country’s sins, as i do elsewhere.

i am thankful that my feet face forward and aren’t twisted under themselves so that every step is pain.

and, lastly, i am thankful that i am among the very, very few in bihar who can leave.

happy thanksgiving, dear friends. i hope it is full of family and joy and laughter. pause a moment in the celebrations and be thankful that you, too, were not born in bihar.

let me tell you about my classes here. words cannot do them justice; their smiles, their squabbling, their colours… but i’ll give it a go:

on the days that i teach here in forbesganj, i walk to the rampol center where kishori mandal takes place. it takes about half an hour, down one of the two main drags and then off onto the side road that leads to the red light area. i pass market stalls and sugar cane juicers, water buffalo pulling carts laden with children and rice, women walking with 5-foot long bundles of reeds balanced on their heads… dogs and goats eating from the trash on the roadside, women selling apples and men selling medications. the filth of the street seeps up through my non-water-proof sandals and stains my toes. people stare, but not as much as they once did. there is a chai wallah who always says good morning to me… even when it is evening. the rickshaw drivers who congregate at the intersection recognize me and no longer try to offer me a ride. the beggar who sits on the bridge has a beautiful smile. i give him coins when i have them, and even when i don’t he always says namaste and waves, with true kindness in his withered face. the house at the fork where i bear right has a man in uniform with a machine gun, and two black and white pet (?) rabbits. all three of them area always outside, and the fear and joy (at ‘guns and buns’) balance each other out. by the time i get to the narrow lane that goes down to the center i am damp with sweat and smell like the city, no matter how clean i was before i started out.

but here is where my cheeks begin to ache. the girls see me coming and run, barefoot and skinny, to meet me. they clamour to hold my hand and look up at me, beaming. didi, didi! they cry. ke se ho? i say, asking them how they are. ti khai, ti khai, they answer. ‘okay.’ they pull me down the lane and into the center, gathering around me as i put away my sunglasses and, if there’s power, set up the ipod. ‘dance, dance!’ they cry, and more girls join us every minute, until there is a group of us, usually about 12, sitting on the concrete with our dirty feet extended into the middle of the circle. their dupattas [the scarfs that go with salwar kameezes] are wrapped and tied intricately around their torsos so that they are free to dance without tangles. most of them are too poor to afford jewelry, so they wear tiny splinters of wood in the holes in their ears and left nostrils, to keep their piercings in place for when they can afford something shiny.

we start by taking deep, slow breaths. in and out, with our arms rising and falling in time with our breathing. then we start to make noise; a relatively foreign concept for most children here, who are ridiculously ‘well-behaved’ and silent. we put our hands on our chests and hum…. feeling the vibrations and hearing our voices blend. eventually we yell at the top of our lungs… something that thrills them no end. then we begin to move – wiggling our toes, feet, legs… all the way through our bodies. we affirm with each motion: ‘these are MY toes… this is MY head…’ and ultimately, ‘this is MY body.’ even though they are just mimicking me, they know what they are saying. occasionally we say it in hindi, and the laugh at my pronunciation.

eventually we stand up and begin to move our bodies through the dark room. we leap and twirl, and we memorize movement patterns that are emotionally neutral canvases: exercises which invite emotion but do not dictate it. in this way, when we pass the movements around the circle, each in our turn, some girls express joy, some sorrow, some anger, and some emotions that i do not recognize or know the name for. the dancing allows them to express the inexpressible. when we take turns making up our own dances in the middle of the circle (using the Wandering Beach Ball as our prop) each girl now dances for several phrases… whereas two months ago they were loath to even step into the center of the circle alone. they used to look to me for approval as they danced; now they dance for themselves. i cannot stop grinning.

the class will soon devolve, as they fight and tussle to claim one of my hands as we stand in circle stretching our upper bodies or balancing on one foot or swaying like pare, a tree. at the end i put on some happy music, vivaldi or mozart or something irish or zimbabwean, and toss the beach ball into their midst, and they dance carefree and crazily while i pack up my things. they help me press the air from the beach ball. they sit next to me and chatter. they walk with me all the way down the lane, but when i turn onto the road they stay behind. i taught them to blow kisses and now when i walk away i turn every few steps because they have called out, didi! and are standing there blowing me kisses and shouting, namaste, didi! this goes on until i am out of sight around the curve – a hundred yards or so. step step, turn, blow a kiss, shout namaste, mai kalaungi!, turn, step step, etc.

i walk home elated, high, floating. the muck i walked through earlier becomes invisible and when people stare at me i just smile.

and that is why i am still here. it’s true that you get more than you give. and, as i wrote to a brave friend of mine who is teaching inner-city kids in chicago, the act of showing up is half the process. the girls here don’t care that i come to dance with them; they care that i come at all. i validate them, though that sounds horribly condescending. but i don’t mean it to; in their eyes i am Important and Special, and thus my showing up day after day for them proves that they, too, are important and special and worthy. sometimes we sit and play clapping games for hours, or catch, and this too is therapy, this is time for THEM and only them, with no ulterior motives. and they blossom with it, these lotus children, slowly and beautifully, petal by petal in the mucky, muddy water in which they were born.

dance when you’re broken open, dance when you’ve torn the bandage off. dance in the middle of the fighting. dance in your blood. dance when you’re perfectly free. ~rumi

‘haa’ = ‘yes’ in bihar. despite what i wrote previously, this is a dangerous word, in both directions. on the one hand, the indian people are generally so obliging that they don’t want to disappoint you… which means they will inevitably answer ‘yes’ to most any question if they don’t completely understand it. what this means is that you MUST phrase questions specifically, i.e. ‘WHICH way to simraha?’ rather than ‘IS this the way to simraha?’ because if you ask the latter, they will must likely respond with a ‘haa,’ even if it ISN’T.

this realization occurred to me some time ago, and got me briefly lost.

but the danger of ‘haa’ works both ways, as i now know. i tend to say ‘haa’ a lot… or ‘ti ke’ which is like ‘okay.’ they are pleasant, generally affirmative things to say… but beware if you don’t know exactly what you are responding to… in this manner i was forced to consume 3 bananas in quick succession the other day while sitting on the train tracks (i ate the one, enjoyed it, and then answered ‘haa’ to what was apparently ‘will you eat two more right now?’). and today i became engaged, when i answered ‘haa’ to, so i gather, a proposal of marriage. it was in the street… on the way back from kishori mandal… a man pulled over on a motorbike and said something to me (which is usually along the lines of ‘visiting?’ or ‘having a nice walk?’ or what have you, to which ‘haa’ is most often an appropriate knee-jerk response). but after i said it, he leaned into the street and yelled, ‘i husband, she indian wife!’ and looked very pleased with himself. a child clapped. the nearby goat didn’t bat an eye.

our engagement was, needless to say, a short one. i broke it off by walking into a shop to buy 8 eggs. the wallah gave me 9 instead. i considered it an engagement gift and i’m not returning it.

i make new choices, every day. it’s interesting to observe the workings behind my mind as my choices evolve. i have come to no longer doubt certain choices that seem trivial but really aren’t. my sub-conscience has evolved along with my surroundings, weighing options and consequences and helping me to choose wisely.
here are some of the choices i have made recently. they may not be yours, and they may not even be mine if i were elsewhere, but here, now, doing this work, these were the ‘right’ choices in my mind; i have no doubt of that at all. and being so sure is a beautiful thing.

i choose to drink the water… it is ‘better’ to drink what someone offers me so kindly, in a dirty metal cup, when i am in their home, than to refuse it, even though i may have an intimate relationship with the toilet later on. i choose to eat and drink everything i am offered out of hospitality, because that experience of someone finding joy in sharing their meagre pantry with me is worth any negative side effects. some may say i am, by default, choosing to be sick. but that’s okay. it’s worth it. it’s my choice.

i choose to let nisha, a sad and shy 14 year old who was prostituted by her father and sister, brush and braid my hair for hours. all the girls at kasturba have lice, and not sharing a hairbrush is cardinal rule number one, but it is worth it to risk discomfort and annoyance to bond with a girl who has few allies in the world, letting her be skilled and admired for her work.

i choose to wake up at 1, 3, and 5 in the morning to feed a baby chuchundra (a rat-esque rodent) that appeared in my room. i could have put him (ram chu chu) outside and left him to the elements… but the fear of disease and the hassle of syringes of milk and late night squeaks pales in comparison to the joy of a blind creature curled in my palm seeking warmth.

i choose to travel alone at night, by train and on foot. the beauty of a flat indian savannah with candles dotting the terrain, the quietude, the lowing of cows and buffalo, the fireflies and wisps of song… all these things outweigh the risk tenfold.

i feel that these little choices were, in a way, inherent in the larger choice i made, so long ago, to come here in the first place, to climb this tree. as though choosing this place, this work, carried with it many branches and leaves, and my YES to india, to bihar, to these girls, was also a yes to these other experiences. in my life at home in the states i practiced saying ‘no,’ being firm and not over-committing myself. but here… here ‘yes’ is a beautiful, joyful word that, at first, i had trouble saying. fear crept in and i was hesitant in word and action. now i accept everything i am offered – be it food or assistance, a ride or a word. i trust everyone and everything. is it naivete? yes, surely. but it feels so wonderful, to not worry, to not fret, to just relax and believe in my fellow humans, and in the universe, and in my experiences. this is not to say i don’t listen closely to my gut (literally and metaphorically!), it’s just that my inner-voice and intuition have expanded, and now they allow me to expand as well.

this is a rambling and incoherent jumble… and i apologize. blame ram chu chu and his late night feedings… but i was so touched last night, as nisha brushed my hair. my ancient and deep-set fear of lice had, now that it was faced with the actuality, completely disappeared, and i wanted to try to share that sense of well-being and inner peace that came with saying ‘yes.’

thank you for letting me tiptoe into your inboxes with my little stories. thank you for saying ‘yes’ to sharing these experiences with me. i am truly honoured and humbled by it.

the black goat with curled horns and 3 teats, lounging on the steps of a temple painted watermelon. she chews her cud as a pile of trash burns nearby and a man with a sugarcane press squeezes juice for passersby.

the boy who wears sandals on his hands and pvc pipe on his shins as he drags himself through the street on all fours, his legs warped and useless, his shirt red and torn.

the bus, colourless and monstrous, made of metal with nothing to soften it, from whose window one of my students leans, waving, crying ‘didi! didi!’ as it takes her to her family, her smile lighting up her beautiful face.

the toddler across the street, eyes blackened, with string for an anklet, crying as he pees into the gutter and his mother stands behind him in a sari the colour of grass and blood.

eleven girls, sitting in circle with me, hands on their chests, feeling the vibration of their own voices as they hum a chord into a concrete room and feel it build and wrap them up. their colours are bright despite the lack of light, their dupattas wrapped tightly around their chests to allow for dancing, and when asmeena breaks the chord by giggling they all dissolve into peals of laughter; beautiful, youthful laughter.

the cow who sticks her head in the office door, looking for who knows what, her rump filthy, her udder full.

a woman wrapped in cotton, with a huge basket of bananas balanced on her head, and her son at her side. his left foot faces backwards, giving him a sad, twisted gait. but when he stands next to his mother on the overpass to the train station, he is tall and proud.

the table and stall of goods and wares for sale for diwali ~ so many sweets, piled up in pyramids of white and orange, with wasps and flies filling the glass display cases and the wallah slowly sipping chai and smiling. next to him a potter sells little terra cotta diyas for filling with mustard oil and cotton wick and lighting.

and the tall pale girl from california, her hair in a permanent bun, her nose sunburnt, her clothes filthy, walking down the main road in forbesganj, the street full of rickshaws, cows, and buses, the sun setting behind her in an orange haze. her toes are black with grime, her shirt wet with sweat, but her smile, though tired, is genuine and happy.

‘saving face’ is a curious mix; it is shame, righteousness, and pride, with some indefinable need to be seen in a particular and continued manner. in bihar ‘saving face’ leads to honour killings and beatings, and to families turning their daughters out of the house because they are ‘soiled’ after having been prostituted.

but i learned about saving face in a slightly lighter context: chaat. it’s true~ everything i need to know about india i learned from the snacks. or something like that…
it went like this: i was sitting on the train on my way to kasturba, wedged tightly between a disgruntled holy man with a bell on his crooked walking stick that jingled incessantly with the motion of the train, and a woman wrapping her toddler in the folds of her sari as they both slept. the wallahs made their way through the crowded car, calling out their goods in their particular sing-songy jingles. lunch had been a long time ago and i was a bit peckish, as well as annoyed that the ticket master had refused to sell me the proper ticket and thus over-charged me by 6 rupees. so when the behl poori wallah pressed his way through the crowd and passed, i decided a snack would be just the thing to raise my spirits and my blood sugar. my brother brannon had been pestering me for weeks to try behl poori, (‘indian rice krispies,’ as he put it…) and i figured if the stanford behl poori was *that* good, the indian version must be killer. little did i know how right i was…

the behl poori vendor looks like a medicine man and a steel drummer. a cloth around his neck holds his box of tricks in place in front of him, like a drum, and there 7 little steel cylinders of magic surround the main bowl of puffed rice. for 4 rupees (about 8 cents) he deftly tosses the rice with a scoop from each cylinder (green chili, onion, salt, masala, mustard oil, sprouted garbanzos, sprouted lentils) and then in a show of prestidigitation, he whips two squares of yesterday’s newspaper into a little cone, into which he dumps the resulting orangish medley. all of this takes about 10 seconds, and he moves on to the next car and the next victims.

by and large, watching me breathe seems to be an afternoon’s entertainment for many people, especially when i am captive on the train. people stare unabashedly and unblinking, as though expecting me to spontaneously combust at any moment. when i am actually *doing* something then it’s REALLY a show. and when i’m doing something INDIAN, such as eating behl poori, then i might as well be ‘gone with the wind’ and ‘citizen kane’ wrapped up in one double feature.
all of which is to say that when i ate my behl poori yesterday, there were many idle eyes upon me.

oh. my. goddess.

i have, if i do say so myself, a very high heat tolerance (or very numb taste buds, take your pick), and it’s not uncommon for me to eat tabasco by the spoonful or order my thai food ‘extra spicy.’ but nothing could have prepared my poor mouth for the Attack of Fire and Brimstone that followed. my eyes watered and threatened to spill over into tears but by sheer willpower i kept from crying, grateful to be hiding, as ever, behind my trusty ray bans. my lips burnt ’til i thought they were bleeding. my mouth was filled with fire ants, running down my throat and searing my esophagus. and all the while my traveling companions stared at me… waiting, i imagined, for me to break.

and i learned what it is to save face. i kept eating, in giant mouthfuls (feeling, perhaps erroneously, that a lesser number of huge mouthfuls would be ultimately less painful than a greater number of small bites…), feeling my respiratory and heart rates skyrocket and beads of sweat roll down my spine. i even breathed occasionally, between swallows. the water bottle in my bag taunted me with its nearness… but i didn’t reach for it, and i finished my chaat and neatly folded the paper cone and smiled pleasantly, trying to mentally put out the wildfire in my mouth.

i disembarked at simraha, and got about two steps from the train before chugging the contents of my beloved pink water bottle and gasping with relief.

and that is how i learned to save face.

morals of the story: watch out for behl poori. and, your brother might be trying to kill you.

a friend wrote to me, after my last post, and said that i was breaking their heart. this was and is not my intention; i don’t want to hurt you, to shame you, or to scare you. i have no ulterior motive~ i tell it like i see it. but please: don’t let your hearts be broken. these girls’ hearts are not. they are battered, yes, but not broken. broken hearts can’t effect change, or reach out, or plant seeds of goodness. broken hearts are immobilized, stagnant. i write not to break your hearts but to open them. and yes, the farther and wider they open, the more likely they are to hurt now and again, and the world and i will continue to send arrows that will pierce and wound you. but this is a good thing. this lets you know you are alive, and still caring, and still hoping for better, for yourselves and those with whom you share the planet. let your heart ache, once in a while. and then count your blessings, and go about your day. fight the good fights. dream the good dreams. live like the lotus, at home in the muddy water. or in my case, like the ginormous toads, at home in the gutter of sewage.